Former Vice President Joe Biden reacted today to President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran deal, calling it “a profound mistake.”
“It will isolate the United States from nearly every major world power,” he said in a statement. “It will weaken our credibility and global leadership. It will allow Iran to garner international sympathy while doing nothing to reduce its harmful activities across the Middle East.”
Here’s Biden’s statement:
All it will likely accomplish is to put Iran back on the path to a nuclear weapon with no clear diplomatic way out. This wholly unnecessary crisis could ultimately put the safety of our country and our fellow citizens, including thousands of men and women in uniform serving across the Middle East, at risk by setting us back on a path to war with Iran. We should continue to work with our allies and partners to counter Iran’s ability to subvert Israel and other partners in the region. However, the deal provided a long-term check on Iran’s pathways to a nuclear bomb, buying us critical time and space to address the regime’s other destabilizing activities.
The fact is that the agreement has been working to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency says so. Our allies in Europe say so. Even the Trump administration has consistently certified Iran’s compliance, a fact confirmed by now-Secretary of State Pompeo’s testimony just last month.Talk of a “better deal” is an illusion.
It took years of sanctions pressure, painstaking diplomacy, and the full support of the international community to achieve that goal. We have none of that in place today.President Trump’s decision will do the opposite of what he says he intends. It will free up Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon and ultimately force us into a binary choice between engaging in a new military conflict or living with a nuclear-armed adversary, both of which pose grave national security risks.
And it puts us at odds with our closest European allies, who repeatedly urged the United States to honor the agreement.As a result, President Trump has manufactured a crisis for his own political interests that puts us on a collision course not only with an adversary but also with our closest partners. It is just the latest example of how President Trump’s notion of “America First” will leave America more alone and less secure.
